Friday, October 31, 2014

The Stranded Whale, Guided Out of the Coves by Tugboats

Robert Pollard is fifty-seven today and today is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. Lots of songs here. Yes, these three songs, along with this shitty blog's Theme Song Three are my four most air-guitared Pollard songs. Also too, we're going hiking, today, tomorrow, Sunday. Just this: had a coffee with a friend yesterday who brought along a friend who's still a devout Lesshittiest, he's hyperventilating the mid-term, what if the Senate goes Republican? I said, doesn't it seem strange to you that Obama sanctioned the Fuck Israel in General and Bibi in Particular just a week before the mid-term and seems to be trying to sabotage any Democratic hopes of maintaining the Senate on purpose? Jeff, said Laura, stop. Who benefits, I said, nodding at Hillary Inevitability on a wide-screen feed of the speech she was giving that very moment at Illhoptay as we were having coffee. She wants to run against a dysfunctional House and Senate run by the very Rightwing demagogues that will drive Democratic voters in buckets in 2016. Jeff, laughed Laura, stop. Does he believe this, Laura's friend asked Laura. I said, you don't think parties concede upcoming minor elections to set up better terms for winning the next major election? I said, out loud, Jeff, stop. It's an old routine, I said. When I point to a landmark for the more frequent Dark, yes, I can truthfully point to the motherfucking poachers, but yesterday, conversing with a stranger while Hillary Inevitability yapped in closed caption on a wide-screen above the stranger's head, the full force of how much I miss D, miss L, I miss K, miss Thursday Night Pints walloped me. I miss free-form yapping with people who yap my yap. I miss writing Thursday Night Pints posts. I never realized how much, all of it. I said, Robert Pollard's birthday is tomorrow. Laura's friend looked at me. Guided by Voices, I said. Stared at me. Lynn and I are going hiking tomorrow, I said.

you don't think parties concede upcoming minor elections to set up better terms for winning the next major election?

i don't think they do, actually - can you cite examples of insider accounts of that kind of calculation? a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as our ancestors would say, and trading losses now for gains later makes some sense in a relatively predictable situation, less sense in a more unpredictable one

with respect to the inexorability of another president clinton, perhaps we will be saved from that fate by another president bush - who knows if it's good or bad?

1. I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable.2. I am subject to illness. Illness is unavoidable.3. I am subject to death. Death is unavoidable.4. I will grow different, separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.5. I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and live dependent on my actions. Whatever I do, for good or for ill, to that will I fall heir.

It's a very BIG gamble to "throw" a minor election. So many unknowns. Not sure one party has the actual capacity to throw an entire national election: that's such enormous power that it would seem almost seem they could easily win ANY election they wanted and would never need to throw one.

I see lots of local activity and serious GOTV activism that seems to belie your thesis—on the one hand. On the other, the D's have not made this an ideological/national gig. Hell, the R's shut down the gov't, their State power actually killed American people who couldn't access healthcare insurance denied them. Don't know why the D's didn't hammer that home. Baffles me no end. Maybe you're right and they want to lose this one though for the life of me I can't see why.

But, assuming you're right, did they intentionally throw 2010? Thereby assuring R control over the gerrymander powers of redistricting and election control? Wow, that was truly self-defeating in the medium to long term. If they have the power to throw whenever they want, then they should never lose unless they want. No? So, by your reasoning, 2010 was not a miscalculation in the all-powerful D playbook, and they did it for some reason beyond our ken. To build distaste for R's? To undermine/put the brakes on the idealism of Obama and his leftier supporters?

As for Hilary inevitability: she was just as inevitable—maybe even more so—in 2006. And see what happened: she got beat. That can happen again. There's a fair amount of distaste on the left for her neocon, triangulation, DLC ways.

On consideration, I can't buy the hypothesis that the D's are all-powerful enough to lose the ones they want to lose in order to win other (more important) ones. I know you do it, in part, to troll your readership/audience, but you also believe it to some extent.

As for less shittyism, an adversarial two-party system pretty much guarantees that. Bush Jr. bullied his opposition into Iraq, but they had such feckless tendencies that his more-shittyism wasn't difficult. That seems to be the R way. But that was the exception that proves the rule, IMO. I, frankly, don't ever see the D's being as adamantly obstreperous as the R's have been these last 5+ years. Their DNA is go along to get along. And thus we get less shitty.

Enjoy your hike this weekend. Looks like we're in for some weather. Careful footing! And return with pix!